


BLUE

by ChatoyantPenumbra



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Chapter 17 Continuation, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Intimacy, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-25
Updated: 2019-09-26
Packaged: 2020-10-28 00:33:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20769557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChatoyantPenumbra/pseuds/ChatoyantPenumbra
Summary: As Dimitri prepares to depart in the night for Enbarr following Rodrigue’s death, Byleth intercepts him and offers all she can to make him stay.A continuation of the scene at the end of Chapter 17.





	1. The Rain

**Author's Note:**

> Part one of two of this fic! I didn’t want to wait until tomorrow to edit to post the whole thing so here’s the first taste of my continuation of Chapter 17’s cherished cutscene, heavily influenced by Troye Sivan’s song “BLUE”: https://youtu.be/rB4Hggrmrtc
> 
> Please enjoy!

_ I want you _

_ I’ll color me blue _

_ anything it takes to make you stay _

_ only seeing myself when I’m looking up at you _

_ I know you’re seeing black and white, _

_ so I’ll paint you a clear blue sky _

_ without you I’m colorblind _

_ it’s raining, every time I open my eyes _

The cold droplets hit her face, but she can barely feel them even as they gather in streams to trickle down and depart from her chin. The clouds above are heavier than they have been all day, deciding at last to depart with their weight and shower all below with the weight of their lament. Thunder rumbles gently somewhere far in the distance as her eyes lock on the man she so greatly wishes to understand. He turns from her, facing the side of the stable to avoid her gaze. With damp hair and an eyepatch obscuring his face, she can’t see his remaining eye, even when she’s desperate to meet it. 

“Those who died with lingering regret, they will not loose their hold on me so easily.” 

She swears she hears his voice begin to waver as his face tilts up to meet the rain. A joyless smile pulls at his lips, and she remembers seeing him like this so many times before, his eyes ever hiding sorrow unspoken, but this is the first time he looks so openly miserable. He’s not hiding it anymore behind wrath; it bleeds from his skin, dripping from his voice, crippling his posture and taking every measurable ounce of strength from his body. 

“But you seem to have all the answers… So tell me, Professor. _ Please_, tell me… How do I silence their desperate pleas? How do I… how do I save them?”

Byleth finds herself at a loss for words, knowing there’s little she can say to comfort the memory of the dead. They haunt her too—those that she’s killed. And most of all, her father. But they don’t visit her as moving shadows, like hands that grasp and pull and wring her breath from her lungs like his do. She can’t even begin to imagine what that must be like, to hear their voices as clearly as she hears his now, and have to answer constantly for her most monumental regrets. She struggles, her lips parting, but the words don’t come.

“Ever since that day nine years ago… I have lived only to avenge the fallen. Even my time at the Officers’ Academy was all so that I could secure my revenge and clear away the regret of the dead.”

Dimitri’s wavering voice breaks then, “It was the only thing that kept me alive… My only reason to keep moving forward…”

Grief washes like a cold wave over her. She feels the instinct of moving closer pull at her feet as she finally grasps the words she knows he needs to hear.

“You must forgive yourself.”

Silence fills the space between them, accompanied by the soft pitter-patter of rain. Dimitri chuckles at last, but it’s devoid of humor. It’s empty, somber. But it’s clear by the way he hangs on those words, mulling over them in a way that drags his head further towards his chest, that they struck his heart, however buried and locked away in the depths of his chest it may be.

He turns back to her now, and despite the absence of a scowl upon his brow, despite how his face isn’t contorted by a grimace, his eyes and cheeks are wet. Byleth knows it isn’t the rain, and she feels the heart in her own chest that does not beat splinter into painful fragments. 

“...But then who—or what—should I live for?”

Her mind at last floods with a number of responses, but she knows there are few suitable answers for someone who’s been through as much pain and loss as he. Ultimately, one surfaces, bigger and more powerful than all of the rest—

“Live for what you _ believe in_.”

“What I believe in…” His eye flickers down. “Rodrigue said the same thing. But is it possible…”

His face fills with anger, but it’s not the same as the kind she saw on the battlefield. This is painted with self-loathing and disgust, directed inward with shame. It’s so visceral that merely looking at him is all it takes to feel the crushing weight of his guilt.

“I am a murderous _ monster_. My hands are stained red. Could one such as I _ truly _ hope for such a life? As the sole survivor of that day, do I… do I have the _ right _ to live for myself?”

Byleth knows they can continue down this road in trying to convince him of his worth, but her heart throbs with the reality that what he needs now isn’t words. She can barely contain her emotion as reaches out her hand, offering her palm up in a beckon for his return to the bond they shared before. A gesture of forgiveness. Companionship. Comfort.

Dimitri hesitates, saying nothing as he dithers. But then he moves, his arm twitching upward with uncertainty, until his own hand closes over hers. Her right quickly joins their union. 

She watches his eye widen as more tears form. 

For the first time, her breath comes out in a shudder, blindsided by his acceptance but never the more enthusiastic to grasp it before it has the chance to slip from her again after the three excruciating moons of his distance. Both of her hands close over his, holding them tightly, before her fingers move on their own accord and stroke the tears from his cheeks. 

“Your hands are so warm… Have they always been?”

It’s then that Dimitri leans—_ actually leans _—into her touch, and his eye closes, allowing the pad of her thumb to wipe away the moisture clinging to his dark lashes. Her hand shifts to the opposite cheek, brushing away the stream beneath his eyepatch. His cerulean eye opens, meeting with her emerald gaze, but his brows pull into a scowl that speaks nothing but the innumerable leagues of sorrow he’s been drowning in all this time.

“Professor… please don’t look so upset.”

His hands squeeze hers gently, firmly, and so blinded by the desire to comfort him, to be near him, she closes the distance, letting go of his hands only to cradle his face in her hands and stroke the apples of his cheeks with her thumbs. 

Yet again, he leans into the touch, submitting to the comfort she so desperately wants to offer him. The rain drums down upon them, but neither he nor she seem to take notice as their eyes lock on each other, absorbed, unwavering. 

“I’m not upset,” she whispers, brushing away the tears that rush down his cheeks when he blinks. “I’m just so happy you’ve come back.”

Moisture falls from her lashes too, but she can’t tell if it’s the rain or uncanny tears. “You told me the Dimitri that I knew was dead, but he’s right here, _ right in front of me… _You’ve always been the same person, merely lost in all that’s happened to you…”

His expression twists, head bowing forward when a choked sound catches in his throat. She can’t take it—knowing that he’s hurting, that he’s been hurting all these years and it’s all unraveling at last now. Her hands slide cautiously, gingerly, to the nape of his neck, and she listens to him suck in an unsteady breath, unaware of the way he nearly shivers from the contact after countless years of being starved of tender touch. 

Byleth pulls him close, her chest meeting with the unpleasant cold of his armor but still holding him nonetheless as if the world is crumbling, because she knows his has been for the last nine years. His body is rigid, slumping to meet her at her height, and she wonders for just a moment if he’s preparing to push her away when her arm ropes around his shoulders and takes purchase on the soaked furs draped around him. 

But then he sighs, his warm breath slow against the side of her neck, and she can’t recall a time when his shoulders ever seemed this small. His arms merely hang at his sides, but he’s surrendered to the way her hand strokes his nape, once, twice, and she feels the bridge of his cold nose bury in the junction of her neck when she adjusts against him.

Her next words come out as nothing more than a hushed murmur. 

“I missed you so dearly. Please, don’t go to Enbarr alone… _ Please stay._”

His body jolts, frozen in place for moments she soothes with her hands, but when he shifts the emptiness at her back disappears, replaced only by the firm press of his vambraces into the drenched and weighty fabric of her cloak.

The breath leaves her lungs; Byleth can’t tell if it’s the way he squeezes her now or if the sense of closeness has stolen her ability to draw air. She latches onto the only skin she can reach, her touch lingering at his neck. 

All that remains is rhythm of his heartbeat at her fingertips and the sound of the rain as it patters endlessly against them.

For the first time, the voices that haunt him grow silent.


	2. Chamomile

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part 2, please enjoy!

* * *

The candles flicker when met with the draft that comes through her windows, mostly barred by the monastery’s wooden coverings. Ever still, the sound of rain outside bleeds into the silence of her room in the absence of words. 

Dimitri’s cloak hangs near the door, wrung and joined by Byleth’s to air dry. The smell of chamomile fills the space as the former professor dries her hair, having replaced her soaked attire with a dry set from the dresser. Similarly, Dimitri sits upon the edge of her bed, feeling terribly out of place stripped of armor and the drenched clothes he left up in his own quarters on the way here. A towel hangs around his shoulders, catching the moisture before it has the chance to bleed into his plain, parchment-colored tunic.

He studies her appearance, apprehensive and fearing the sneeze he knows may come. Had they spent any more time in the pouring precipitation he’s sure at least one of them would have fallen ill, but his own health is the very last of his worries. 

She turns then, checking on the tea she left to steep for the past few minutes, and her emerald gaze shifts at last to him, wearing that faint smile she should know by now makes his heart falter.

“It should be ready,” she mumbles. “Something to stave off the cold.”

She draws closer, placing the cups and saucers that had been concealed in her cabinets upon the table she pulled before the bed. 

“I’m sorry I don’t have any proper chairs tonight. Mercedes asked to borrow them to study with Ashe and Annette in her room.”

Something of a chuckle leaves him, and it’s still strange, not quite driven by true humor, but nonetheless it is not the degrading scoff that he’s been used to these past five years. 

“You may fall ill but your biggest worry now is that I will not have a suitable place to sit?”

She pours the tea, offering him his cup first as another smile ghosts on her lips before it too disappears as quickly as it had come when she looks at him. It’s as though she notices something she hadn’t before, as it shades her expression with worry. “You could too. You’re still wearing something wet.”

He glances down at himself for a moment in question, knowing his sense of self-awareness has dramatically declined since the attack on Garreg Mach, but he doesn’t find to what she’s referring. When his eye meets hers next, she taps her right cheek, dithering at the side of the bed but not sitting. He addresses the more important thing first. 

“It’s your bed, Professor, and yet you hesitate… Do I scare you?”

His voice is grim. She knows he isn’t making a joke. 

She seats herself an arm’s length apart to give him room to breathe, knowing it’s been at least half a decade since he’s experienced any breadth of closeness to anyone, and the last thing she wants is to drive him away when it had already taken such a toll on him to get to this point. “You never have.”

He tries to ignore the comfort he takes in those words. 

She reaches for her own cup of tea, testing first for temperature before she sets it down to cool for another minute. But it doesn’t seem to bother him, as he takes another sip and returns it to the saucer in his other hand. The clink of the porcelain brings about an old feeling of familiarity to the air between them. 

The sigh that leaves Byleth is, for the first time in such a long time, not a release of tension. The rain drones on outside, heavier than before. 

Thunder rumbles, a little closer now. 

They merely breathe, enjoying the comfort of the candlelight and the sound of rain on the old monastery stone. It had always been like this before. Comfortable silence, and the thoughtful gazes, sometimes far off in times past, sometimes merely enjoying the scenery. Dimitri is the one to break that silence first when he’s emptied his cup.

“It seems like it’s been a lifetime since we did this last.”

The memory brings something of a smile to her lips, her eyes flickering to the walls around them. 

“Though not as nice as it would have been in the garden like before, don’t you think?”

“Your room is comfortable.” 

He neglects to mention how he had lingered here when the Monastery was abandoned, save for the thieves and imperial soldiers that occasionally came through. It tortured him—how her belongings remained even when she was gone—creating a space both sacred and forbidden, one that he had protected with a viciousness that still burned with heated passion at the forefront of his mind. He can’t wipe the memory of how he had found a pair of imperial soldiers here, and in his blind rage, he’d dragged the men by their skulls out to the courtyard before cutting them to shreds. To defile her things by touching and rifling through them was a sin so foul that he could never forgive it, but to taint her belongings with blood, even in her defense, was infinitely worse. He’d tried his best to rearrange her things like he had remembered them being in the few times he’d been here before, but he nevertheless wondered if she noticed the difference in her return. 

Byleth’s exclamation of surprise shakes him from his thoughts, and when he glances to meet where her gaze is cast he finds the handle of the teacup broken off in his fingers in multiple shards, the main shell of the cup cracked in half along the handle’s fault and lying in two upon the table. Only droplets of tea are left, wiped away quickly with a handkerchief she had at the bedside, but her fingers are more deft in meeting with his and gently pulling the broken pieces from his hand.

“Did you cut yourself?”

It hits him again just how warm her hands are against his icy being, especially as she forfeits the cloth and turns his palm over to examine his skin.

He grunts, aggravated by his inability to control his strength. It’s the curse of his Crest, breaking things that are precious. He laments the beautiful porcelain set he knows he’s ruined. “_Agh_, I’m sorry, my grip—”

His instinct is to pull away to avoid contact, but he can’t bring himself to with the way her fingers pull gently at his flesh to inspect for a near-invisible slice that has yet to fill in with blood. When she finds nothing, she remembers herself, glancing up apologetically whilst releasing him. 

But he doesn’t retract his hands; they linger. He snorts in disbelief. 

“The number of people I’ve slaughtered would make your head spin, and yet you’d still fret over me getting an insignificant cut from drinkware I broke myself.”

He watches her expression shift; guilt immediately hits him for upsetting her. 

“I’ll get you a new set.”

She’s about to rise, but his hand wraps around hers, stopping her dead in her movement. Their eyes meet again. They don’t part, speaking words they can’t say aloud. 

His gaze shifts down once her hand has completely relaxed in his. It’s then that he notices the complete silence of his mind, the warmth of her completely erasing the voices of the dead that tug forever at his consciousness. Everything is still, quiet, more than it’s been for five years. 

The last time he felt this way was…

_ “I will fight as you command… I will kill anyone should you ask it of me…” _

He remembers with perfectly clarity how her expression had shifted just as it did a moment ago, before she answered with a soft:

_ “Would you come with me for some tea?” _

He had forgotten himself when they left the training grounds for the garden, forgotten himself when she presented him with a new whetstone after hearing of the worn state of his own, forgotten himself in the warmth of tea and her presence that felt like the radiant sun in the midst of a harsh Faerghus winter. 

As he comes back to the present, his lips pull into a faint smile at the memory when his gaze shifts to the pot.

“After all this time, you still remembered.”

Her other hand joins both of his. Her eyes gaze at him now with a dedicated attention he doesn’t deserve. 

“You used to tell me how warm and comforting you find chamomile.”

She doesn’t realize he had been talking about her. But he won’t say that. He can’t bring himself to, now.

Even holding her hands like he is should be a sin deserving of the goddess’ wrath. 

Her hands shift, cradling his in a way that makes the heart he was certain was dead shudder inside the confines of his chest. Her fingertips stretch over the sensitive underside of his wrists. He realizes now how much smaller her hands are. He nearly shivers when her gaze shifts to eye level. 

“Your eyepatch is still wet. You don’t want to dry it?”

He hesitates. “I’ll spare you from the sight of the scarring. It would only upset you.”

She doesn’t ask him what happened. She figures it’s too soon to force him to relive those memories, and he can’t find himself as anything but thankful for that. She’s always been considerate, understanding. And despite all he’s done she still looks at him like she’s worried only for his sake.

She doesn’t have to say anything else for him to know what she’s thinking. 

_ Keeping something soaked against it won’t help it. _

He sighs. And relents. 

The black string slides from its fastening around his head, revealing the deep scarring nearly vertical along his lid. The eye that’s been hidden away until now remains closed, even as his other eye gazes forward at her. It’s a gruesome wound that’s long since healed over, but Byleth can only imagine the physical pain and psychological anguish he had to suffer being dealt a wound that took away half of his sight. 

Her breath catches somewhere in her throat, and the hands that offer him so much comfort meet hesitantly with his cheeks. Dimitri watches her gaze fill with a mix of compassion and sorrow. He can’t ever remember a time he’s seen her tremble like that. 

It’s then that she mumbles something he wouldn’t have ever expected her to say.

“_ I’m sorry _.”

Questioning colors his face as his brows pull towards his eyes. He can barely fathom why she, of all people, is apologizing. 

“The last thing this is is your fault.”

Her fingers shake at the edge of his vision, unable to bring herself to touch the lost eye itself, but it’s clear by the way she looks at him that she would give anything to undo it, undo the state that he’s in now. 

“If I hadn’t been so reckless in the battle here when the Empire was invading… I wouldn’t have… I wouldn’t have fallen into the river. I could have stopped this from happening.” She struggles, her gaze falling with her hands. He watches her shoulders shake and feels something visceral within his being, like all he wants to do is tear life and limb from the people that ever put her in a position like this in the first place. “I let you fight on your own with Claude. I should have…”

“Professor, we thought you had been knocked from a cliff to your death. Had you been anyone else I am sure you would not have survived. You’re the best strategist and fighter I’ve ever met, but even you can’t stop every loss in war.”

Her brows quiver, as if she’s about to cry, but the tears don’t come. She looks up at him, struggling for an apology that can reverse everything that happened to him, but she knows such a thing simply doesn’t exist. Even Divine Pulse’s powers aren’t enough to change all that’s happened. She may possess the powers of a goddess, but her abilities are still finite. 

“I let you down when you needed me. These past five years, you… _ I’m so sorry. _”

She can barely fathom how his hand meets with hers that’s cradled around his cheek, squeezing ever-so-firmly. 

“Everything that’s happened to me these past five years has been a result of Edelgard’s actions and my mistakes. All you’ve done is stand by me and help me, even when I pushed you away. For what could you possibly hope to apologize?”

His insistence quiets her, stripping from her the ability to argue. Only one thought remains, prompted by his words that hold so much resolve that it shakes her to her core. It’s such a stupid thing to think about now, but she can’t shake it from her mind no matter how she tries. It grips her so hard that her mouth moves on its own—

“Did you mean it when you told me you wanted me to stand by your side forever?”

His fingers twitch around hers. Her eyes meet his, searching them in a way that makes him feel completely naked in her sight.

He recalls that conversation in the Goddess Tower and every subsequent instance he swore his loyalty to her. He had written the initial suggestion off as a joke, so the fact that she still remembers that after all these years awakens something within him that he had not felt in so very long. 

“I told you once that my strength is yours alone. What you do is your choice.”

Her fingers cling to his, taking his right hand into her own when her other arm snakes around his shoulders. He pulls her close faster than she does. 

“I won’t leave again. I, too, promised you we would face the trials ahead together. I still mean that.”

Somewhere in the warmth and comfort of it all, she feels the way his heart beats against his chest, with vitality and promise. Her head curls against the rhythm and she clutches him in a way she didn’t know she was capable of; all she can do is cling to him, gathering him tightly in her arms. He sighs against her clavicle, and before long the draft snuffs out the candle that burns at the bedside. 

She finds his head at her chest, submitting into the pillow and sheets with the weight of his body leaned against her own. Her fingers find their way into his damp locks, and she can’t recall letting go. 

Neither of them can find the will to rise again that night. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading, and if you’d like, please do let me know how you felt about these!


End file.
